Americans Get Richer: The latest Census data show economic gains across income groups

WSJ editorial.

"Liberals can’t credit welfare programs whose growth has slowed thanks in part to reforms imposed by Congress. According to the most recent data, the Social Security disability rolls fell by 25,000 in 2015 after growing by 1.3 million between 2009 and 2014. The number of food stamp recipients dropped by 3.4 million between 2013 and 2015. In 2014, 99 weeks of unemployment benefits finally ceased.

Most of the recent income growth has been due to more Americans working—and Americans working more. Between 2015 and 2016, the number of people with earnings—i.e., income from employment—rose by 1.2 million. Meanwhile, the number of full-time, year-round workers increased by 2.2 million as many people moved out of part-time jobs.

Labor force participation hasn’t much budged since its nadir two years ago, but unemployment among minorities and less-educated workers has dropped sharply amid a tightening labor market. Job growth is a function of an improving economy and lower infra-marginal taxes on work as government welfare has been scaled back.

Liberals are bemoaning that the Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, didn’t post a significant decline last year. But income inequality drops principally during recessions as the wealthy lose a larger share of their earnings than everyone else. As we learned in the Obama years, the preoccupation with inequality leads to economic policies that reduce growth, which leads to more inequality.

The left also overlooks that millions of middle-class Americans are moving into higher income brackets, as Mercatus Center researcher Dan Griswold points out. The share of Americans earning less than $35,000 (in real 2016 dollars) fell to 30.2% from 38.2% between 1967 and 2016 while the proportion earning more than $100,000 has roughly tripled to 27.7%."